ly sepulchre, and the
other places consecrated by the presence of their religious founder,
fallen into the possession of infidels. But the Arabians or Saracens
were so employed in military enterprises, by which they spread their
empire, in a few years, from the banks of the Ganges to the Straits of
Gibraltar, that they had no leisure for theological controversy; and
though the Alcoran, the original monument of their faith, seems to
contain some violent precepts, they were much less infected with the
spirit of bigotry and persecution than the indolent and speculative
Greeks, who were continually refining on the several articles of their
religious system. They gave little disturbance to those zealous pilgrims
who daily flocked to Jerusalem; and they allowed every man, after
paying a moderate tribute, to visit the holy sepulchre, to perform his
religious duties, and so return in peace. But the Turcomans or Turks,
a tribe of Tartars, who had embraced Mahometanism, having wrested Syria
from the Saracens, and having in the year 1065 made themselves masters
of Jerusalem, rendered the pilgrimage much more difficult and dangerous
to the Christians. The barbarity of their manners, and the confusions
attending their unsettled government, exposed the pilgrims to many
insults, robberies, and extortions; and these zealots, returning from
their meritorious fatigues and sufferings, filled all Christendom with
indignation against the infidels, who profaned the holy city by their
presence, and derided the sacred mysteries in the very place of
their completion. Gregory VII., among the other vast ideas which he
entertained, had formed the design of uniting all the western Christians
against the Mahometans; but the egregious and violent invasions of that
pontiff on the civil power of princes had created him so many enemies,
and had rendered his schemes so suspicious, that he was not able to make
great progress in this undertaking. The work was reserved for a meaner
instrument, whose low condition ir life exposed aim to no jealousy,
and whose folly was well calculated to coincide with the prevailing
principles of the times.

Peter, commonly called the Hermit, a native of Amiens, in Picardy, had
made the pilgrimage to Jerusalem. Being deeply affected with the dangers
to which that act of piety now exposed the pilgrims, as well as with the
instances of oppression under which the eastern Christians labored, he
entertained the bold, and, in all